Also known as Subcommandante Marcos, the Mexican revolutionary from the State of Chiapas has been identified by Mexican Intelligence sources as a former university professor named Rafael Sebastian Guilen Vicenze. After some six or seven years of self-imposed exile, he is once again making the rounds of various areas of Mexico, where he is being greeted largely as a hero. This despite his somewhat checkered past, which included heading up an insurgency which ended with the loss of well over one hundred lives.
Since then, he has retired to a remote jungle area, where he has been the head of a project of experimental communities, all of which have met with notable success, though dependant on outside financial contributions and other support. He would like to see this project expanded throughout the country. More to the point, he is unhappy, very unhappy, with the recent results of globalization, particularly with what he sees as the devastating effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Mexico, especialy on the underpriveleged Mexican worker and family.
Yet, as civilian leader Delegate Zero, Subcommandante Marcos has no desire, he says, to run for any political office, including the up-and-coming Mexican presidential elections. At the same time, he is expresing grave reservations as to the qualifications and intentions of the current front-runner for the position, a former Mexico City mayor by the name of Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, who heads up the left leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution.
On the face of it, he would seem to be yet another in a long line of socialist oriented politicians who have emerged in Latin American politics, such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Evo Morales of Bolivia, and of course Fidel Castro of Cuba. As such, one wonders exactly from where and whom Marcos is drawing his support, or hopes to. And if he holds true to his word to seek no office for himself,who then will he support? Or is he merely, like Caesar, aiming at public acclamation before revealing his true intentions?
It may not be such a bad thing, this sudden attraction to socialism in Latin America, it may give pause to the monolithic stampeed of international corporatism in it's obvious attempts to do what big business does best-wipe out the competition and establish a monopoly, or to put it more aptly, a loose confederation of monopolies, dependant on corrupt politicians on both sides of the border for it to flourish. The ultimate casualties of course would be the rights of workers, as well as the environment, to say nothing of true democratic politcal representation. Oh, and I almost forgot yet another eventual casualty-capitalism.
In fact, for all their faults, the Latin American socialists, may well provide the one thing that capitalism, as well as democracy, seems to require in order to not only survive, but to thrive-competition. This is a lesson that has not been lost on me since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the almost immediate launching of what George Herbert Walker Bush, when still President, termed, "The New World Order".
The old world Europeans, back in the days before the discovery of America, had another term for it-feudalism. If Subcommandante Marcos is to be yet another general in the front of the war on globalization, I hope he has a secure armor, as he will need it. I wish him well.
On the bright side, Vincente' Fox, nearing the end of his term, will not be allowed to run for re-election. Thankfully, Mexican law now forbids more than one term in office for the presidency of that country. Hopefully, by the time this situation all plays out, this will indeed be as good a thing in reality as it would seem to be now.
